The Concubine's Tattoo

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “But you can come in here with me.” Seeing indecision pucker the old man’s forehead, Kushida coaxed, “Come on. As long as you leave before the guard wakes up, he won’t care.”

  “Well…”

  Kushida’s desperation inspired cunning. “You don’t believe I killed Lady Harume, do you, Yohei?”

  “Of course not,” the loyal retainer said indignantly. Then his certainty wavered. “But you attacked the Sōsakan-sama and his men.”

  “I didn’t kill Harume,” said Kushida. “I didn’t even know she was going to tattoo herself, so why would I have poisoned her ink jar? But Sōsakan Sano needs to make an arrest, so he framed me. I never broke into his house; I never attacked anyone. It’s all a lie!”

  Sputtering with outrage, Yohei burst out, “How dare the Sōsakan-sama falsely accuse my young master? I’ll kill him!”

  “And end up convicted for murder yourself? No, Yohei, you mustn’t.” Kushida sighed with feigned resignation. “All we can do is wait for the truth to come out. Then my name will be cleared.” His skin felt tight, his skull ready to explode from the throbbing pressure. “Now open the door and come inside so we can finish our game. I promise I won’t try to escape. You’ve known me all my life, Yohei. You can trust me.” Kushida let his voice quaver: “Besides, I’m lonely. I—I need someone near me.”

  Yohei’s eyes brimmed with love and pity. “All right.” He put a finger to his lips and headed toward the door.

  Hurriedly, Kushida replaced the go pieces in their container, and tucked it in his kimono. Then came the clank of the door’s iron bar as Yohei pulled it out of the brackets. Kushida lifted the go board by its legs and stood to one side of the door, heart pounding. The guard snored on. Slowly the door slid open. Yohei entered the room on tiptoe, holding the candle.

  “Young master…?”

  Kushida stuck out his foot. Yohei tripped over it and sprawled on the floor. “What—?!”

  In the space of a blink, Kushida leapt over Yohei and into the corridor. “No, young master!” he heard his friend shout. The guard sat against the wall, spear in hand. Hearing the commotion, he stirred. Kushida swung the go board. With the sickening thump of solid wood and ivory against bone, it slammed against the guard’s head; he fell unconscious. Kushida flung aside the board, plucked the spear out of the guard’s limp hand, then ran down the corridor.

  “Please come back, young master!” Yohei called, hobbling after him. “You’ll never get away. The yashiki is surrounded. The soldiers will kill you!”

  Doors screeched open and cries arose as the noise awakened the household. Troops appeared and began chasing Kushida. “The prisoner is loose!” they cried. “Catch him!”

  Legs pumping furiously, Kushida raced for the back door. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two soldiers gaining on him. Pulling the container of go pieces out of his kimono, he tossed it into the soldiers’ path. The container hit the floor and the lid popped off, scattering pebbles. Amid surprised yelps, the soldiers slipped, then crashed to the floor.

  Kushida flung open the door and burst out into the lantern-lit courtyard, startling two sentries. Wielding his stolen spear with deadly efficiency, Kushida struck their heads with its shaft. They crumpled to the ground. More soldiers leapt off the roof to join the battle, but Kushida was already through the gate. Two slashes of his spear wounded the guards stationed outside. Patrolling troops rushed to the rescue; archers fired arrows. Running for his life, his love, and his honor, Kushida fled into the night.

  27

  “We observed all the correct procedures for house arrest, but the old man let him out,” said the commander who had summoned Sano to the Kushida estate. “None of this is our fault”

  He gestured angrily around the torch-lit courtyard. There lay four men wounded by Lieutenant Kushida during his escape. Kushida’s parents and a few retainers huddled on the veranda of the house, a modest one-story building with half-timbered walls and barred windows. From outside in the street, curious spectators peered through the bamboo thicket.

  Sano had been awakened by the arrival of the messenger who had delivered the bad news. Now he stood in the chilly courtyard with Hirata as troops milled around, spectators chattered, and the first azure luminescence of dawn paled the sky. Inwardly he berated himself for losing a suspect. He should have recognized Lieutenant Kushida as an escape risk and denied him the privileges of rank, placing him in Edo Jail instead of under house arrest. Though Sano considered Lady Keisho-in the more likely murderer of Harume, he still didn’t believe that the lieutenant had told the complete truth about either his relationship with Harume or his reasons for breaking into Sano’s estate. With difficulty, Sano resisted the temptation to vent his anger at himself on the troops for letting a single man overcome them.

  “Let’s forget about blame for the moment and concentrate on capturing Lieutenant Kushida,” Sano said. “What’s been done so far?”

  “Men are out searching the bancho, but they’ve sent back no word on Kushida yet. Unfortunately, he’s a fast runner.”

  Kushida could be clear out of Edo by sunrise, Sano thought with a heavy heart. Yet he doubted that leaving town was the lieutenant’s whole motive for escaping. Why had he broken house arrest? The answer could be crucial to locating Kushida. Sano told the commander to continue the search. Then, motioning for Hirata to follow, he walked over to the Kushida family and introduced himself.

  “Did your son say anything that might tell us why he escaped, or where he was going?” he asked the lieutenant’s father.

  “I have not spoken to my son since he was suspended from his post.” The elder Kushida glared, his simian features set in hard lines. “And his most recent bad behavior did nothing to reconcile us.”

  Now Sano could better understand Lieutenant Kushida’s obsessive passion for Harume: with such an unloving, unforgiving parent, he must have been starved for affection.

  Kushida’s mother cast a frightened glance at her husband, then nodded toward an old samurai weeping by the door. “Yohei saw him last.”

  This, then, was the faithful retainer whom Kushida had tricked into opening the cell door.

  “Nothing that my young master said or did warned me that he meant to escape,” Yohei mourned. “I don’t know why he did it.”

  Staggering forward, Yohei prostrated himself at Sano’s feet. “Oh, Sōsakan-sama, when you catch my young master, please don’t kill him! I’m the one who’s responsible for what happened tonight. Let me die in his place!”

  “I won’t kill him,” Sano promised. He needed Kushida alive for further questioning. “And I won’t punish you if you’ll help me find him. Does he have any friends he might run to for help?”

  “There’s his old sensei—Master Saigo. He’s retired now, and lives in Kanagawa.”

  This village was the fourth station along the Tokaido highway, about half a day’s journey away. Sano bade farewell to the Kushida family. Then he and Hirata mounted their horses outside the gate.

  “Dispatch messengers down the highway to warn the post station guards to be on the alert for Kushida,” Sano told Hirata. “But I’m not convinced he’ll leave town.”

  “Nor am I,” Hirata said. “I’ll have the police circulate Kushida’s description around town and tell the neighborhood gate sentries to watch for him. Then…” Hirata sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. “Then I’ll meet Lady Ichiteru.”

  They parted, and Sano headed back toward Edo Castle to launch troops on a citywide manhunt before attending the trial that Magistrate Ueda wanted him to see. Whether or not Kushida had killed Lady Harume, he was a danger to the citizens. Sano felt responsible for his capture, and any crimes the lieutenant might commit before then.

  The trial was already in progress by the time Sano arrived at the Court of Justice. He slipped quietly into the long, dim hall. Magistrate Ueda occupied the dais, his somber face illuminated by lamps on the desk before him, with a secretary on either side. He caught Sano’s eye and
nodded a greeting. The female defendant wore a muslin shift. Wrists and ankles bound, she knelt before the dais on a straw mat on the shirasu. A small audience knelt in rows in the center of the room.

  While a secretary read the date, time, and the names of the presiding officials into the court record, Sano recalled how Reiko had told him about observing proceedings in this court during her youth. He wondered if she was here now, watching from some hidden vantage point, still defying him. Would they ever come together as true husband and wife? Why had her father wanted him to witness this trial?

  Then the secretary announced, “The defendant, Mariko of Kyobashi, is charged with the murder of her husband, Nakano the sandal maker. This court shall now hear the evidence. I call the first witness: her mother-in-law.”

  As the defendant wept, an old woman rose from the audience. Hobbling up to the dais, she knelt, bowed to Magistrate Ueda, then said, “Two days ago, my son suddenly became ill after our evening meal. He gasped and coughed and said he couldn’t breathe. He went to the window for some air, but he was so dizzy that he fell on the floor. Then he began vomiting—at first the food he’d eaten, then blood. I tried to help, but he thought I was a witch who wanted to kill him. I, his own mother!”

  The old woman’s voice cracked in anguish. “He began thrashing and screaming. I hurried out and fetched a doctor. When we got back to the house just a few moments later, my poor son was lying dead. He was as stiff as that pillar.”

  Excitement eased the weight of Sano’s worry and fatigue. The sandal maker had died of the same symptoms as Lady Harume! Now Sano understood why Magistrate Ueda had summoned him.

  “Mariko cooks and serves all our meals,” the witness said, glaring at the defendant. “She was the only person to handle my son’s bowl before he ate. She must have poisoned him. They never got along. At night she refused to do her wifely duty by him. She hates housekeeping and shopping and sewing, and helping in the store to earn her keep, and taking care of me. We starved and beat her, but even that wouldn’t make her behave properly. She killed my son so she could go home to her parents. Honorable Magistrate, I beg you to grant my son justice and sentence that wicked girl to death!”

  Then followed the testimony of more witnesses: the doctor; neighbors who confirmed the unhappy state of the defendant’s marriage; the police who had found a bottle hidden under the defendant’s kimono, tested the contents on a rat, observed its quick demise, and made the arrest. A solid case, Sano thought.

  “What have you to say in your own defense, Mariko?” asked Magistrate Ueda.

  Still weeping, the woman raised her head. “I didn’t kill my husband!” she wailed.

  The magistrate said, “There is much evidence of your guilt. You must either refute it, or confess.”

  “My mother-in-law hates me. She blames me for everything. When my husband died, she wanted to punish me, so she told everyone I poisoned him. But I didn’t. Please, you must believe me!”

  Stepping forward, Sano said, “Honorable Magistrate, I beg your permission to question the defendant.”

  Heads turned; a buzz of surprise swept the audience. It was rare for anyone except the presiding official to conduct interrogations during trials. “Permission granted,” Magistrate Ueda said.

  Sano knelt beside the shirasu. From behind a tangled mop of hair, the defendant eyed him fearfully, like a captive wild animal. She was emaciated, her face covered with bruises, both eyes blackened.

  “Did your family do this to you?” Sano asked.

  Trembling, she nodded. Her mother-in-law said righteously, “She was lazy and disobedient. She deserved every beating my son and I gave her.”

  Anger blazed in Sano. The fact that this situation occurred often made it no less reprehensible to him. “Honorable Magistrate,” he said, “I need information from the defendant. If she provides it, I shall recommend that the charge against her be modified to murder in self-defense, and that she be returned to her parents’ home.”

  Protests rose from the audience. A doshin said, “With all due respect, Sōsakan-sama, but this sets a bad example for the citizens. They’ll think they can kill, claim self-defense, and get away with it!”

  “She murdered my son! She deserves to die!” shouted the mother-in-law.

  “You and your son mistreated that girl,” Sano retorted, though he wondered why he was interfering in business that had nothing to do with his own investigation. Dimly he realized that his rage stemmed from his new awareness of the plight of women, a need to somehow make amends to Reiko for society’s cruel treatment of her sex. “Now you’re paying the price.”

  “Silence,” Magistrate Ueda thundered over the audience’s clamor, which subsided after the guards dragged the cursing, shrieking mother-in-law out of the room. To Sano, he said, “Your recommendation shall be accepted if the defendant cooperates. Proceed.”

  Sano turned to the girl. “Where did you get the poison that killed your husband?”

  “I—I didn’t mean to kill him,” she sobbed. “I only wanted to make him weak, so he couldn’t hurt me anymore.”

  “You’re safe now,” Sano said, but he could only hope her parents wouldn’t punish her for the failed marriage—or wed her to another cruel man. How little he could do to correct centuries of tradition! Especially when he wasn’t willing to begin at home. “Now tell me where you got the poison.”

  The defendant sniffed mucus up her nose. “I bought it from an old traveling peddler.”

  Choyei! Sano’s heart leapt. “Where did you meet him?”

  “At Daikon Quay.”

  Canals gridded the district northwest of Nihonbashi. Flagstone quays fronted warehouses; along these, dockworkers carried firewood, bamboo poles, vegetables, coal, and grain to and from moored boats. Sano knew the area from his police days, because the yoriki barracks were located in adjacent Hatchobori, on the edge of the official district. He rode down Daikon Quay, past porters laden with bundles of the long white radish. Everyone’s breath formed clouds of vapor in the bright, chill air; a stiff breeze rippled the waters of the canals, which reflected the sky’s wintry blue. Shouts, crashes, and the clatter of wooden soles rang out with sharp clarity. Sano could smell the distinctive blend of charcoal smoke and distant mountain snows that for him poignantly heralded the year’s final season.

  The defendant had given him directions to the place where she’d met Choyei: “He has a room in a house in the third street off the quay.”

  Sano steered his mount into the street. Rows of two-story slum dwellings lined a space barely wide enough to accommodate Sano’s horse. Overhanging balconies blocked the sunlight; from clotheslines stretched across the narrow gap, laundry flapped. Night-soil bins, overflowing trash containers, and a privy shed befouled the air. Oily smoke rose from chimneys. Closed doors hid whatever activities the one-room apartments sheltered. The street was empty, permeated with a dreary quiet.

  Dismounting outside the fifth door, Sano knocked. When he received no answer, he tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He peered through the cracks in the window shutters. “Choyei?” he called.

  The door of the next apartment creaked open. A thin, unshaven man came out. “Who are you?” he demanded. When Sano identified himself and stated the purpose of his visit, the man bowed hastily. “Greetings, Sōsakan-sama. I’m the landlord, and it just so happens that I need to see the peddler, too. He owes me rent. I know he’s in there, with some man who came to see him. I heard them talking just a moment ago. The old rascal is just pretending he’s not home.” Pounding on the door, the landlord yelled, “Open up!”

  Sudden intuition compelled Sano to action. He rammed his shoulder once, twice, three times against the door. The wooden panel gave way. From inside the room came wheezing, sucking noises, punctuated by groans. Alarm struck Sano’s heart. “No,” he said as comprehension spurted through him like ice water. “Please, no.”

  “What’s wrong, Sōsakan-sama?” the landlord cried. “What’s that sound?”


  Sano burst into the room. At first it was too dark for him to see more than shadowy silhouettes. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, the shadows became a chest, a cupboard, and a table. Bowls and jars covered every surface, including the floor. Pots steamed on a clay stove. The air was redolent with the medicinal odors of a pharmacist’s shop. In a far corner lay a human figure, the source of the terrible noise.

  Sano tripped over a mortar and pestle. He pushed aside a frame of the sort worn by traveling peddlers, a wooden contraption with baskets suspended from crosspieces. He knelt by the prone figure.

  “Give me some light!” he ordered.

  The landlord opened the shutters and lit a lamp. Choyei flashed into vivid focus. He was ancient, but vigorous of physique. Dirty white hair straggled around his bald crown. Eyes bulging with terror stared up at Sano from a face as gray and creviced as sun-baked mud. Blood flowed out of his gaping mouth and poured from a wound in his chest, staining his ragged kimono. Wheeze, suck, groan. The noise continued as he arched in pain, fighting for breath.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” moaned the landlord, wringing his hands. “Why did this have to happen on my property?”

  “Get a doctor,” Sano commanded. Then he examined the deep gash between Choyei’s ribs, made with a sharp blade, that alternately sucked and burbled blood. “Never mind, it’s no use.” Sano had seen this type of injury before, and recognized it as fatal. “Call the police instead.” Choyei’s visitor must have stabbed him and fled just moments ago. “Hurry!”

  The landlord rushed out. Sano pressed his hand over Choyei’s wound, temporarily sealing the hole. The wheezing abated. Choyei inhaled and exhaled hungrily. Feeling the warm, wet suction of bloody flesh against his palm, Sano said, “Who did this to you?”

  The peddler’s mouth opened and closed several times before his voice emerged. “Customer…bought…bish,” he gasped out. Red froth bubbled from his nose. “Came back today …stab …”

  Bish: the arrow toxin that had killed Lady Harume. Elation rushed through Sano. The customer must have been her murderer, who had returned to prevent Choyei from ever reporting the purchase to the authorities. Sano cast an impatient glance toward the door, wishing the police would hurry. The killer was still in the area. He longed to give chase, but he needed the testimony of his only witness.